COMMENTARY: As we confront Korea, listen closely to past lessons

North Korea's deputy ambassador to the U.N. said the situation in his country has "reached the touch-and-go point."
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This undated file photo distributed by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, at an undisclosed location in North Korea. The world is wondering if North Korea’s next nuclear test will involve a nuclear missile screaming over Japan after the North said it may test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)(Photo: AP)

Let’s face it, Kim Jong Un is an oh-so-enticing target. He’s a dreamboat of a villain right out of central casting in Hollywood. He acts as if he took Dictatorship 101 at a community college, worked studiously, and passed with honors. And that hair is as distinctive as Hitler’s itty-bitty mustache.

Let’s go down the checklist.

Megalomaniacal? Check.

Paranoid? Check.

Mercurial? Check.

Homicidal? Check.

And, naturally, we assume that his impoverished, underfed, propagandized and severely repressed people are just aching to leap out from under his demonic yoke and breathe the sweet air of freedom.

Well, not so fast.

We’ve heard this siren call before in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Repressive and murderous regimes that were practically asking for it. And we gave in and let them have it. The results:

Vietnam: Tens of thousands of Americans died. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese died. We lost. The Communists won, converted to a weird form of capitalism, and are currently selling us shirts.

Afghanistan: The British lost 100 years ago. The Russians lost in the 1980s. We killed a whole bunch of religious zealots and continue to hang around getting picked off, spending money and accomplishing very little. Thousands have died. The drug traffic, as always, continues to thrive.

Iraq: We bumped off another honors student from Dictatorship 101 and unleashed another fresh crop of bickering religious zealots. At least 100,000 Iraqis died. Instability reigns after more than a dozen years of “regime change.”

Syria: We demanded that yet another Dictatorship 101 grad step down. He said no. The ever gentle Russians joined in by bombing his country into pieces. Thousands died. ISIS flourished. Millions fled from a flourishing ISIS and wound up in places like Cologne, Germany. Joy and merriment remain elusive.

As outcomes go, there is not much to say except that things never seem to work out quite the way we had hoped. They say that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, here we are again. North Korea offers us yet another opportunity to strike a blow for failure. With the benefit of hindsight, we have an opportunity to recognize the limits of firepower and save a lot of time, money and, oh yes, lives.

CLOSE

North Korea continued its attacks on President Donald Trump Sunday calling him a quote, “war merchant and strangler of peace.” Veuer's Maria Mercedes Galuppo (@mariamgaluppo) has more.
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First, we must consider that South Korea is our ally and they are in no hurry to see Lil Kim on a spike. Their economy is just dandy, they don’t need any refugees, and a war would look bad on their fourth-quarter financial statements.

Second, the Japanese are the ones with the air raid problem as North Korean missiles scud over their territory. They don’t want a united Korea on purely financial grounds. The Japanese economy is only now pulling out of a deep dive and they don’t need economic competition from a more powerful Korea.

Third, China. They too don’t want any refugees from North Korea and they are happy to hide behind the Grand Poohbah’s lunacy as a screen while they build up their own military. The status quo suits China just fine … for now.

That just leaves us with the poor North Koreans. From all accounts, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a true Orwellian dictatorship with the ruling government inflicting itself on every aspect of an individual’s life. This includes an organized idolatry of Crazy Kim and the founding family. Poverty, famine and stagnation hold sway. Little contact with the outside world is permitted, although an underground market does bring the stimulating insights of other minds to a favored few. Most North Koreans don’t know how badly off they are. The system is that effective.

Still and all, any conflict powerful enough to oust His Rotundity will rain most of its destruction on the impoverished and thoroughly innocent of that blighted land. How do I know this? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria cry out from the pages of history.

Is it worth it? I agree that, as the saying goes, “past results are no indication of future outcome.” But they sure are good lessons to mull over. There may come a time when the Kimster goes too far and innocent people die. If (and only if) that day comes, we and the world (and it must be the world and not us alone) have no choice but to turn him off.

In the meantime, for the sake of the innocent who always get trampled on in these situations, the honorable thing to do is let the Author of All Good Things stew and continue to strangle his finances as best we can. The Soviet Union toppled that way. It was the first dictatorship in history to literally go out of business. And very little blood was shed!

A slow financial strangle may not be as emotionally rewarding as cooking Kimbo's goose, but it does save lives. Lots of them. The past tells us so.